Carroll Community College

Evidence of Carroll Community College's growth is unmistakable. Consider that recently, the county commissioners approved nearly $2 million for design plans on a 77,000-square-foot academic building that school officials hope to open in the fall of 2009. The perpetually crowded 1,200-space parking lot has prompted plans for an additional 270-space lot. And the Westminster college's continuing education department recently reported record revenue of nearly $1.2 million -- a 13 percent increase over the 2004-2005 school year.

For some, continuing education classes represent the chance to take that watercolor class, explore interior decorating or get to know Microsoft Excel. But among the traditional offerings, Carroll Community College - and other Maryland schools - is providing lifelong learners with additional skills, using the advantages of the Internet. How to be funny. Assertive. A better communicator. Under the broad umbrella of "personal development," the courses have cropped up at colleges across the country - and their niche nature seems to make them perfect for the online classroom format.

Carroll Community College has proposed an operating budget of $18.5 million for the next fiscal year that calls for a 4.5 percent tuition increase, college officials said yesterday. The proposed budget - a $1.2 million increase over this year's - was presented this week to the college's board of trustees. If approved, it would be the 11th straight year of tuition increases at the college. The tuition increase would become effective in June. "We think the tuition increase, while it's something we don't like to do, is a reasonable increase given the education that our students get here," said Alan Schuman, the college's executive vice president of administration.

Leo Bretholz was old enough to remember but is young enough to tell his tale: seven years of eluding the Holocaust in Europe, after his mother persuaded her teen-age son to leave his native Austria in 1938 after it was annexed by Nazi Germany. And how he ran - jumping off trains and out of bathroom windows, wading swollen rivers, climbing mountains, fleeing incendiary bombs and crawling under prison walls - to avoid those who would kill him for being Jewish in the 1930s and '40s. Some escapes were less physical, more psychological, as he used his knowledge of languages and people to fake his way out of confrontations with Nazis and their collaborators.

Before she published her critically acclaimed book of short stories Sap Rising, before she won the $54,000 Sophie Kerr Prize for writing at Washington College, before she even enrolled in her first class at Baltimore City Community College, author Christine Lincoln had to give herself permission to speak. "Finding my own voice was what made the difference in my writing career," said Lincoln, one of the guest speakers at the Random House Book Fair at Carroll Community College in Westminster on Saturday.

Calling all Sweet Potato Queens wannabe's. The original "Boss Queen," Jill Conner Browne - author of The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love and two sequels that followed its success and spawned a movement of other "queen" groups, including the Maryland Crab Queens - will make an appearance at the Random House Book Fair tomorrow at Carroll Community College. The author from Jackson, Miss., has inspired women with a message that they are never too old to be playful. Her latest book, The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner)

Award-winning children's author Robert Lawrence (R.L.) Stine of Goosebumps fame and four other nationally recognized authors will speak and sign books at Carroll Community College's eighth annual book fair this weekend. Wes Unseld, the former Baltimore/Washington Bullets center, coach and a member of the NBA Hall of Fame, will be attending as honorary chairman of the event. "I'm looking forward to enjoying myself," said Unseld, a Carroll County resident. "I understand it's a fabulous event."

With two-story glass windows that frame the front of the $6.1 million, 31,000-square-foot red-brick structure, the Nursing and Allied Health Building is the newest addition to the 80-acre campus of Carroll Community College in Westminster. Nearly 100 nursing students stroll past the purple lobby walls to get to the four classrooms and four laboratories that are shared with students in allied health, which includes physical therapist assistant, emergency medical services and continuing education programs.

Carroll Community College plans to expand its fitness offerings for senior citizens into a comprehensive program dubbed the "Senior Fitness Institute.""It's a program organized and proposed by the community college, but carried out through the entire community," said Carrie McFadden, a fitness consultant hired by the college to organize the program.Kathy Menasche, coordinator of community services in the college's Office of Continuing Education, said the college currently reaches only a small fraction of Carroll County's senior population.

When Luke Fisher of Westminster graduated from high school five years ago, he had doubts that he could excel at a four-year school. He turned down an offer to attend Towson University and opted instead for Carroll Community College. Fisher would become editor of the campus newspaper and a peer mentor for first-year college students. He is set to graduate this spring with an associate's degree, and plans now to pursue his bachelor's degree. He's found a couple of area schools - including the University of Maryland and Hood College - that appear particularly eager to have him. "Their transfer advisers went above and beyond trying to get me to visit their campuses," said Fisher.